Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz Page 0,38

family sickness that had haunted her all her life. She started saying how she was still in love with me and that she would go have sex for money so we could run off together, but I told her to stop. “You can’t keep talking like this,” I said. In my mind, I knew that this was just her way of expressing love. She sounded so convincing, and she was so fine. But no matter what, we wouldn’t be doing that. And I definitely couldn’t hide her in my house anymore.

I picked her up and dropped her off at one of her friends’ places. She kissed me good-bye, thanked me, and vanished. It would be years before I heard from Jewel again.

THE MOTHERLAND

I was about to enter high school. And because we lived in a predominantly Black neighborhood, I was all set to go to predominantly Black Dorsey High. I liked the idea. I already had friends who went to Dorsey, and besides, unlike my junior high, which was twelve miles away, Dorsey was close by. As it turned out, though, Dorsey was not in my future.

Just as Albert Roker wanted the best education for his daughter, Roxie Roker wanted the same for her son. One day, Mom was talking to Lyle Suter, her classmate from Howard University, who lived down the street on Cloverdale. Lyle ran the art department at Beverly Hills High and convinced Mom that the school’s music and arts program was incomparable.

Because we didn’t live in Beverly Hills, Mom didn’t know how to arrange that. Lyle did. He proposed to the principal that Mom volunteer to teach drama a few times each year. In exchange, they’d let me in. The plan worked, and come September I’d be heading off to Beverly Hills High. But it was only May, and I had a whole summer ahead of me.

I was fine with picking up odd jobs and making music. But leave it to Mom to raise the stakes. How about spending the summer in Africa?

Sure, I’d love to see Africa, but how was she going to pull it off?

Well, Mom had a huge network of friends who adored her. She and Louis Smallwood, for instance, were close as siblings. Louis worked on set as a private tutor for Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges of Diff’rent Strokes and Ricky Schroder of Silver Spoons. Louis also had lots of side interests, including a partnership with Ben Bruce, a well-to-do Nigerian who owned grocery stores throughout Lagos. Looking to bring African American R&B to Africa, Ben had booked bands into Nigeria’s National Arts Theatre for the summer. Louis offered to hire me as the stage manager’s assistant. Was I willing?

More than willing, I couldn’t wait to jump on a plane.

The preparation, though, turned out to be rough. I’d soon learn that I was super-sensitive to certain meds. The needed vaccinations knocked me out, and the malaria pills didn’t work. (More on that in a minute.) But nothing was gonna stop me. I made the flight: LA–New York–Monrovia–Nigeria.

After landing in Lagos, Louis and I were driven to Yaba, a bustling suburb reminiscent of Nassau. I stayed with Ben Bruce’s family. They had a good-size home where an armed guard kept watch night and day. That first night almost did me in. It was hot as hell. I slept in a sweltering room on a bed surrounded by mosquito netting. The netting didn’t do shit. The mosquitoes ate me alive—for hours. The bites were so severe I became delirious. Ben and Louis had to throw me in the shower to bring back my sanity.

Next day, though sleep-deprived and covered in itchy bumps, I got up determined to hit the streets. First thing I did was expose my naïveté. I asked a police officer where the lions were.

“In the zoo,” he said. “Where else would they be?”

I felt like a dumb American kid who had to remember he was in a city with office buildings and businessmen carrying briefcases. The difference, of course, was that everyone was Black. I loved the feeling of being ensconced in an all-Black nation.

Downtown Lagos was cool, but the back streets were even cooler. That’s where I made friends. Percussionists banged out beats on all kinds of drums I’d never seen before. I tried every one of them. I spent nights at a dance club housed in a big boat dragged up on dry land. The ultimate discovery that summer was Fela Kuti, the Nigerian musician who had created